Bradley Cooper was nominated for Best Leading Actor at the 91st Academy Awards for his performance as hard-drinking, dog-loving, pop music-hating Jackson Maine in A Star is Born, as most prognosticators, well, prognosticated. It was a mild surprise, however, that he wasn’t also nominated for Best Director; instead, Spike Lee (BlacKkKlansman), Paweł Pawlikowski (Cold War), Yorgos Lanthimos (The Favourite), Alfonso Cuarón (Roma), and Adam McKay (Vice), and notably no women, are competing for the honor. In an interview with Oprah Winfrey, Cooper admitted that he originally felt “embarrassed” by the snub.

“I’m never surprised about not getting anything. But it’s funny you ask this, because I’ve thought about this,” the first-time director told Winfrey at a taping of her SuperSoul Conversations. “I was with my friend at a coffee shop in New York City, and I looked down at my phone, and [Cooper’s publicist] had texted me congratulations on these other things, but didn’t tell me the bad news. And I went, ‘Oh, wow.’ And the first thing I felt was embarrassment, actually. Think about it. I felt embarrassed that I didn’t do my part.” Eventually, Cooper realized that “even if I got the nomination, it should not give me any sense of whether I did my job or not.” Just ask Spike Lee, who was nominated for Best Director for the first time ever this year. Or again, literally every female filmmaker.